This months goals :) :) :)

A new month is beginning and with it some new goals that belong solely to me, not Tom, not my mum, not my bank manager or my accountant... just little me :)

Thankfully February won't be seeing me dive head first into freezing Arctic oceans but it will hopefully help me dive into my new goals with gay abandon. So what are these new goals?Oddly enough they don't all involve training but I'm hoping they could all help me feel better about training which has gone really well this week.

1) Take one photograph per day

2) Zero face picking

3) Stretch and do physio exercises every day

As most of you know I set up my own freelance photography business up just over a year ago and I love it. One thing I'm really bad at though is opening my mind to my creative talent. I feel like I shut it away a long time ago and am having difficulty tapping back into it. Recently my friend Graham from The Flash Centre (my local camera shop, who are amazing) emailed me the link to American photographer Chase Jarvis. It started my mind whirring and the dusty nuts and bolts thunking and clunking but I still wasn't sure how I could use his inspirational pictures and general open minded-ness (if such a word exists) to help unlock my very closed mind. So, February's number one goal... to take one photograph per day regardless of whether I'm shooting for a client or not is what I am hoping to be the beginning of cracking open the sealed lid to my once flowing creativity. It starts tomorrow which fits in quite nicely as tomorrow I turn 34yrs old and in taking one photograph per day for the next year will mean that I will have in a very simple way documented my whole 34th year on planet earth. I plan to print them out and stick them in a little book so I can see my progression and I'm really, really looking forward to it :) I guess I could put them on-line too but I'm not sure how many people would be interested in seeing that? Let me know and I'll do it.

The second goal...zero face picking has been a bug bear of mine for an absolute eternity and those of you that know me will know that I can spend forever at the mirror looking for something to pick on my face, even if there isn't anything there. I regularily get small patches of eczema due to the excessive amount of chlorine that I'm in. Instead of leaving it alone I'll scratch it, make it sore and red and it takes ages and often antibiotics to help get rid of it. If only I could keep my filthy mits away from my face I'm sure my skin would be in much better condition. This goal, and I kid you not is going to be the toughest challenge of all three and if I can do it for the next 28 days I'll be over the moon. Unfortunately like an alcoholic I will have to move it onto my March goal, my April goal and my May goal and keep it going until it's no longer in my thought pattern. It's actually quite scary and liberating at the same time. Here's to 28 days of clear skin, wuhoo!!! Oh and a bloody miracle, but if I say I'm not going to do something then I have to stick to it. If I don't do it now I don't think anything will ever stop me and that's not a nice thought.

My third goal... to stretch and do my daily physio exercises is something I've neglected for way too long. I've got a recurring back problem which I have to have regularily manipulated. I have weak glutes. I get tight through my right IT Band and I should be stretching my psoas thoroughly after every session. Do I do any of the exercises and stretches that my physio tells me??? No. Therefore I'm throwing good money away because I'm too lazy to keep the physio at bay. Not too lazy to swim 5km in the pool, or to ride up to 112 miles or to run up to 26miles, and they're bloody hard things to do. Not doing these tiny little exercises from my physio are making my training painful and possibly pushing me towards getting injured so, as of tomorrow and then Tuesday when I go to get straightened out again, I shall be doing what I'm told, daily, no excuses. Here's to a straighter back and no sore feet :)

'The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.' Flora Whittemore

H. x